Donald Rumsfeld was the United States Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President Bush. He is known for many things, but will always be remembered for his statement of an old truism, as quoted -

There are a decent number of stories going around the Internet, many of them recent, about how artists should push back on being asked to work for free. Let me state up front that I agree with this position to the tune of about 80%.

I'm an Apple guy, and while I'm not religious about it, I like that all my devices work together now and are generally portable. The UX works for me and I like having a development platform that is, under the hood, UNIX-based.

That said, Cortana kicks Siri's ass. It's not even a fair fight. What Lisa's Windows phone can do, in terms of an intelligent AI assistant is incredibly compelling.

Apple, your user experience is second to none. Now it's time to kick up the actual heft behind it. Microsoft is eating your lunch in this one, specific area. Step it up.

My latest article is now up at the GoDaddy Garage. It's an overview of image optimization for web sites aimed at small business owners who are comfortable doing their own web work. Not advanced by any means.

Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy, sent an open letter to The Honorable Thomas E. Wheeler, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

In short, GoDaddy supports net neutrality. Full stop. It really is that simple. And (full disclosure), as a GoDaddy employee, I'm very pleased to see this. As I've said many times, this isn't the same company people remember from many years ago. Management gets it. In this case, it's the right position and the company is taking it. I continue to confirm that I made the right decision coming to work here.

Stephen Hawking is being quoted in the media as saying that the Higgs Field could wipe out the Universe. His point is that at a high enough energy, it could trigger what's called "vacuum decay," a state whereby a "bubble" of vacuum expands at the speed of light, destroying everything in its path. This could happen if the energy of the field is not constant and eventually changes or, as some media are reporting, if a sufficiently-advanced civilization were to experiment at such high energies.

To do this would require a linear accellerator, as we understand them, the size of the orbit of the Earth. Not something we're about to build any time soon.

Here's why everyone is wrong, at least about the second part: if it could have happened, it would have by now. Indeed, anything that any civilization could do to destroy the Universe would have resulted in such destruction long ago. The Universe is huge. If something could have happened, it would have. To think that in the 13.7 billion years that we think the Universe has been here NOTHING capable of destroying it has happened yet, but just might any day now is the pinnacle of self-importance. The odds just aren't there.

So relax. The Universe will be here tomorrow. I'm prepared to bet on it, in fact ;)